What does "it's a good start" really mean.

What does "it's a good start" really mean.(okvivi.com)

200 points by cosminro 14 years ago | 43 comments

Lost in translation type differences in evaluating projects for people in US, Romania or the startup community.

jcampbell1 14 years ago |

This strikes me as very true, but irrelevant. As an American I say something positive to every startup founder I encounter, but secretly think they are nuts. Had I met the founders of these companies, below is what I would have thought:

Heroku: Sounds nice but impossible to deliver. Even if you do, no one is going to trust their business to your startup's platform.

Dropbox: Yet another backup solution that is going nowhere.

AirBnb: Have fun building a marketplace. Chicken and egg problems are impossible to solve.

I have learned to not trust my instincts. Now I tell startups, "Sounds cool, but why are you at a tech event? You should be at an event for fashion/teachers/bar owners/tour guides/whoever your customer is. Why are you clowning around seeking reassurance from from other programmers?"

Okvivi 14 years ago | |

I think there are benefits and drawbacks to both being supportive even if you don't think that the idea is good, and to being brutally honest.

After living here long enough I'm no longer trying to judge, it's just the way things are, and I just learned to translate. That's why I made the graphs.

I think it's only irrelevant if you understand this difference of translation and adapt to it.

Not everybody understands it though, specially when you first move here or when you first have contact with the US. I know it took me a non trivial amount of time to realize it.

jcampbell1 14 years ago | | |

I think your piece is interesting, informative, useful, and well written. I just don't think others' opinion on ideas are particularly relevant. My opinion on Dropbox/Heroku/AirBnb's ideas would have all fallen on the left side of the bell curve, which only shows my opinion on ideas is irrelevant. I am just saying that the position one is placed on the bell curve is not important. Understanding different cultures is very important.

I won't address the relative merits of different cultural norms on being supportive vs being brutally honest.

hooande 14 years ago | |

Even though you might have been wrong about those successful startups, there are dozens or hundreds of others for which your negative first impression would have been dead on. You shouldn't stop trusting your instincts because you might have been wrong about a small number of high profile companies.

As you pointed out, the main issue here is that founders are counting on other people so much for validation of their ideas (and staking their egos on it). I don't see why you wouldn't just give your honest initial impression. If the founders become discouraged or upset with you for doing so, then that's their problem and not yours.

iqster 14 years ago | | |

I don't understand your argument for "you shouldn't stop trusting your instincts ...". You say that you would have been right dozens or hundreds of times. But we all know that startups are a numbers game. It doesn't matter if you say no to a hundred startups. It matters that you said yes to the one that became AirBNB or DropBox.

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing. I am genuinely perplexed at how monumentally bad outcomes can be produced by a series of rational choices.

The best I figure is the following. I gain my "wisdom" by making mistakes and trying to learn from them. The problem is that the environment from a year ago is quite different from that today. Heck, every passing second yields an environment different from the past. And sometimes (always?), it is the external factors that make the big difference.

Let me illustrate a case in point. When I first saw MIDP/CLDC on a Motorola IDEN phone, I knew this was the future. I spent a lot of time making something of it. Yet, the market wasn't ready (and frankly, neither was the technology). In 2003-2004, I saw .net compact framework on a Compaq iPaq. I was so amazed by the technology that I again spent a lot of resources making something of it. In those days, you'd have to put a bulky sleeve on your iPaq in order to get wifi. Cellular data? Forget about it ... it cost a fortune and the carriers were determined to milk their monopoly to the max. When the iPhone was announced in 2007, I saw it and dismissed it. And it wasn't just me. I was in grad school and had worked in the cell phone industry. Pretty much every smart person I knew told me this was yet another non-event. We all know what happened next to the people who wrote software for the iPhone in the early days.

When I reflect upon this and other similar experiences, I can't help but think that my hard-earned wisdom may have become obsolete without my knowing it. These days I subscribe to a different sage advice that might work better ... "Stay hungry, stay foolish"[1].

[1]: From the last issue of the Whole Earth catalogue as relayed via Steve Jobs in his Stanford commencement speech.

CeiII 14 years ago | |

"This strikes me as very true, but irrelevant"

Not in the context of other people (specifically non-Americans) trying to understand feedback. I find I can say something to an American that is "fantastic!" only to be told by a German "that it would never work". It just emphasises the need to get feedback from multiple avenues, ideally from people who have different world-views. Your example reactions to the three startups backs this point up.

palish 14 years ago | |

Mm.. I don't think you could have seen Drew's original Dropbox screencast and thought "This is going nowhere".

But I suppose that's why I have Dropbox account #314...

younata 14 years ago | | |

> I have Dropbox account #314

Did you wait until they had 313 accounts before you signed up, or was it by random chance?

coenhyde 14 years ago |

As an Australian I can relate to this. Often American's think I'm putting our startup down, just because I'm not overly excited saying everything is awesome and fantastic. I'm extremely positive and have absolute confidence that we will succeed. But I prefer to look at things objectively and to tackle the problems. However American's translate my language into "my startup sucks".

So recently I've been training myself to talk roses when dealing with American's. :)

timknauf 14 years ago | |

We're just across the Tasman from you, and have experienced the exact same thing with our games startup. When my (admittedly modest, even by Kiwi standards) co-founder was over at E3, he reportedly initally caused great confusion amongst Californians by describing our games as 'merely' "pretty good".

vlod 14 years ago | |

I agree. As a Brit my generally phrase is "It's not bad" which translates to: 'Its Okay".

I get the impression they think I've just spat in their faces. :)

prawn 14 years ago | |

(Australian here.)

I think I could have a top-tier international corporation and still have to force myself to describe my product or service as great. I'd probably try to qualify it as opinion - "Well, I think it's pretty good."

gojomo 14 years ago |

I'm guilty of overusing 'great', especially as the first word (actually full sentence) of an email response.

In that colloquial context, it means, "total assent/acknowledgement with what you've proposed or reported", rather than a quality evaluation.

If aimed at a more concrete bit of work output, 'great' is more likely to be a superlative quality evaluation.

For example:

Q: "What about this general logo theme for exploration?" [a proposed abstract direction/plan]

A: "Great!" [means, I agree that's worth pursuing, let's see where it goes]

Q: "I've made this logo treatment."

A: "Great!" [Somewhat vague; definitely means I'm glad we've reached this point (regardless of the treatment quality), but might (if directly gesturing at the object) also imply some evaluative approval]

Q: "How would you rate logo treatment #2?"

A: "Great!" [this finally really means it's evaluated as great on the relevant scale]

Even 'excellent', 'fantastic', and other adjectives are often used this same way: casually used to signal sufficient approval, when describing something prospectively/abstractly/directionally, but only being strong signals of judgement when applied to specific, concrete, completed instances.

rwhitman 14 years ago |

Continuing the generalizations depicted in this post - I would say that the politely disingenuous "this is awesome" response is actually endemic to the West Coast. I've found folks in the Bay Area in particular have a strong aversion to "negative energy".

Having spent some time on both coasts I'd say its not necessarily an "American" thing, its more a "Californian" thing. Here in NYC, I'm learning that negative feedback is pretty common and often encouraged.

hvs 14 years ago | |

Here in the midwest, "this is awesome" is not commonly heard, but people are generally averse to confrontation. So, they will most likely give a "that's interesting" up to, and past, the midpoint of the normal distribution depicted. If it's really a terrible idea in their eyes, they will most likely make a sarcastic comment. Midwesterns (as a general stereotype, which is what we are talking about here) also tend to be less than energetic about new and different things, so no matter how good your idea is, you will be seen as crazy (or stupid) for trying to start a company in the first place.

snprbob86 14 years ago |

Maybe I'm a cynic, but I tend to think that a left-leaning log normal distribution is more likely:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+log+normal+distrib...

eel 14 years ago |

I'm fascinated by cultural nuances like this. I really, really wish there was a website where you could look up things like this based on culture. I don't know how one would start to gather the data for a site like that.

gbog 14 years ago | |

You can start with something more concrete, like color names, ie where stop the yellow and start the red on a rainbow. But in fact, this is just a matter of definition, and is not that interesting. I would find more interesting to diff daily life things, like fridge content, number of close relatives, hygienic habits.

Spenny 14 years ago |

I am not sure that the American viewpoint is necessarily bad in this case, especially as it pretains to working on projects. I think it is pretty safe to assume that people are more likely to pursue something further if they have positive encouragement. Thus, if "it's a good start" generally means that it is an awesome idea to a group of people, couldn't that be translated into meaning that those people continue working on something after they have shown it to others more often? I have nothing to back this up with, but it is just how I would interpret the idea.

Additionally, I always hear the line "it's a good start" as an acknowledgement that the person sees some potential in the idea, but that it needs a lot of work to achieve said potential. In fact, I can't remember a time that I have heard "it's a good start" by itself in a sentence. It is usually accompanied by a ", but ...", and I think the person behind the idea would know that this is coming, as he/she should know that there is still a lot of work that can be done.

tripzilch 14 years ago | |

It's incredibly tiresome in a group, when you can't even bring up a random side thought without people going crazy about it.

Especially once you start to notice they don't quite mean it but just like "being part" of the conversation by drowning it out in praises, to hear their own voice, which is natural, and all very sweet and positive, but it's not very constructive.

It might seem motivating at first, the praise to urge the other guy to continue like that, but at some point it becomes laziness, because you're not adding anything to the conversation or thinking for yourself, just going "yeah yeah great awesome!" and you're not being useful at all, anymore.

It's kind of a bit like what Douglas Adams said, "if their mouths stop moving, their brains might start working".

protagonist_h 14 years ago | |

Yes, but positive feedback for an obviously-doomed project may lead a person to spend a lot of time on it and fail. Of course you never know -- many successful ideas were ridiculed initially. But still, HONEST feedback beats see-everything-through-rose-colored-glasses feedback any time.

dools 14 years ago |

This was hilarious :)

But I think you left off the one, international word for "totally fucking awesome I don't care where you come from":

WOW

If anyone says wow, you know you've got a hit.

Terretta 14 years ago | |

Unless you've just bumped into Cassie from the first UK series of Skins. They'd have you believe UK girls say "Wow" to everything.

TamDenholm 14 years ago |

I'd like to see a graph for British people.

kslimbs 14 years ago | |

Feedback from us Brits is even harder to parse. I always point those who are struggling to this handy table:

http://yfrog.com/z/gy5gxvxj

wisty 14 years ago | | |

<lang="en-UK"> Not bad. </lang>

paganel 14 years ago | | |

Funny, I've worked for both British and American startup-owners, and I could certainly relate to both charts (yours, and the OP's). I liked the British style more, but that's maybe I'm also Romanian and as the OP also showed we're kind of used to being negative about all things :) Whom I didn't like at all were the French (I did work for such company for a year or so), but maybe that was caused by my former bosses having graduated from École Normale Supérieure which made them a little, how should I say, arrogant.

srl 14 years ago | | |

That's funny - living in the U.S. (and having almost not contact with Brits, and too much with Aussies), most of these are still true to me. (In fact, most of them I've used or heard in the last week, intended in the British sense.)

inopinatus 14 years ago | |

We say "that's nice" for everything up to about the 99th %ile, where it's "Jolly good, carry on".

Okvivi 14 years ago | | |

There :-) http://okvivi.com/i/stuff_british_people.png

spazmaster 14 years ago | |

I'd like to see a graph for man/woman ;)

martinkallstrom 14 years ago |

I like the faux-2D diagrams that are in reality one dimensional. Inventive to label the Y-axis "stuff" and give it a recognizable curve to make the post seem scentific.

(Don't know how to rewrite the above to remove the traces of sarcasm. It's just an observation, I'm not trying to depreciate the OP)

martinkallstrom 14 years ago | |

After reflecting on this with a colleague I realized I was wrong. The OP has a thought-out reasoning around the choice of distribution of "stuff" as well.

Downvote well deserved :)

VonLipwig 14 years ago |

American boss just told me what I had made was awesome. After reading this article this morning I am significantly less flattered than I was last week.

Okvivi 14 years ago | |

You should send him a link to my blog post. :-)

smoyer 14 years ago |

I'm American ... I tend to look for the positive in other people's ideas but I can be brutally critical of even my best ideas. Self-deprecation is an art-form best practiced in the company of friends who will contradict you :)

nicksergeant 14 years ago |

It means "This is good, but it has a long way to go."

diolpah 14 years ago |

I must be living in a different version of the United States than the author is. I don't think I've ever experienced the kind of false optimistic outlook referred to here. Is this a Silicon Valley thing?

Most people I talk to about our business are fairly realistic about the challenges we face, or progress thus far, etc.

I just don't think others' opinion on ideas are particularly relevant. My opinion on Dropbox/Heroku/AirBnb's ideas would have all fallen on the left side of the bell curve, which only shows my opinion on ideas is irrelevant.